Artistic Touch: Art left an early imprint on Venturan

Gibbs has pursued art full time since retiring as a clinical microbiologist in 2007.

Judy Gibbs calls herself an accidental artist.

"I had a friend who was a really good artist," Gibbs said. "I thought I couldn't be an artist because I couldn't draw like her."

Then after she finally started taking art classes about 14 years ago, she had to be persuaded to show her work.

"I thought I was just going to be happily in my little corner doing art at home," she said. But friends talked her into exhibiting, and she hasn't stopped.

Since retiring from a 34-year career as a clinical microbiologist at Ventura County Medical Center in 2007, she has pursued art full time. After studying drawing, painting and encaustic, Gibbs discovered printmaking.

"I love the feeling of suspense and awe as I pull a print," she said. "It is such a magical feeling."

Gibbs, a member of the Inkspots of San Buenaventura, is participating in "Think Ink," the fifth annual exhibit of the fine art printmaking group, Nov. 2-30 at 643 A Project Space, 643 N. Ventura Ave., Ventura.

In a recent interview in the Inkspots' studio, the Ventura artist talked about the journey that led to where she is today.

She was born in Ventura to Chinese immigrant parents after World War II. Her father ran grocery stores in Ventura and Ojai. She loved art from the beginning but was shy in school.

"Because I did not speak English until second grade, I got to paint a lot," she said. "They stuck me in a corner with an easel and apron, and I painted every day. I wanted to play school or house or store, but I wasn't able to communicate. I was so shy, I was afraid I would say the wrong thing, so I didn't say anything. It wasn't until I was in second grade that suddenly it just flowed out."

In third grade, she won an art contest at the Ojai Art Center for her mixed-media painting of an angel, complete with angel hair.

"I've always been interested in art, but in a Chinese family, you don't eat off art. You have to do something you can make money at, put a roof over your head and food on the table," she said.

She enjoyed science.

"It was fun because I liked to experiment, I liked all the theories and rules. It was like a foreign language," she said.

After graduating from college, she began her career in microbiology. But through the years she found time to study and get licenses in real estate and interior decoration and became a competitive team tennis player, all while raising a family.

But a diagnosis in 1992 of polymyositis, an autoimmune disease of the connective tissues similar to rheumatoid arthritis, forced her to slow down.

She takes medication, and symptoms come and go, she said.

"It slowed me down a little bit, but not totally," she said.

Finally setting aside her inhibitions, she signed up for a drawing class with Connie Jenkins at Ventura College in 1998 because she wanted to learn how to draw her cat.

Jenkins taught contour drawing.

"She taught in a way that was very easy to do," Gibbs said. "You just looked at an object and you followed it like you were an ant around the whole thing, without looking at your paper. It turned out really cool. I thought, 'I can do this.' "

Jenkins encouraged her to continue with art. She took life drawing with Hiroko Yoshimoto and also felt encouraged. From there she took life painting and then head painting with Carlisle Cooper.

She took oil painting classes with Jenkins, Debra McKillop and Bob Moskowitz — "different takes on different things," she said.

She learned encaustic from Sylvia Torres at Studio Channel Islands Art Center in 2002 and later took a class with Daniella Woolf in Santa Cruz.

"I learned the fundamentals from her and then kind of went on my own. I developed a way of doing Chinese painting using encaustic," she said. She discovered printmaking when she and Betsy Quinn took a monotype workshop with Julia Ayres in Pasadena in 2002.

Inspired, they continued to work together and with friends.

Gibbs and Quinn were among the original Inkspots when the group formed five years ago at the Sea Breeze Gallery in Ventura. After Sea Breeze (later Gallery 255) closed in 2010, they moved to Project 643.

Gibbs started showing her work in 2002 when her oil painting, "Florentine Roofscape" took third place in a Ventura County Arts Council exhibit.

"I wasn't going to enter any shows because I thought I wasn't finished with my education," she said. "Then someone said art is forever learning and if you wait till you learn it all, you're never going to be in any shows. So I started entering all kinds of shows."

She continues to win awards while she exhibits extensively.

She chooses a medium to best express the essence of her subject and is often inspired by the stories behind things, she said.

"I think maybe it's a good thing I didn't become an artist early because you need some life experiences to draw back on," she said.The reception for the Inkspots show is planned from 5-8 p.m. Nov. 2 as part of Ventura's first Friday Art Walk.